


doubt thou the stars be fire

by stormwarnings



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Exchange, AFTG Exchange Fall 2020, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fall Vibes, Friendship, M/M, Roommates, Soft Boys, an overabundance of literature references, ive been staring at this for too long, mostly fluff with a very slight sprinkling of angst, small panic attack tw, small town vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26443276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: Neil Josten vs. soulmarks, pastries, and the wide world of literature.(Alternatively, snapshots of a softer life where Andrew Minyard learns that sometimes, fate gets it right.)
Relationships: Kevin Day & Neil Josten & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 36
Kudos: 252
Collections: AFTG Exchange Fall 2020





	doubt thou the stars be fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeoMoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeoMoy/gifts).



> first fandom event which is kind of exciting!

Neil wasn’t a romantic.

This was a truth. Neil was twenty four, and already he’d lived through more violence than most people would ever see. He had scars that tended to scare people, and enough bad memories to make a normal therapist flinch.

It was a good thing Betsy Dobson wasn’t a normal therapist.

Neil sat in her office, which was cozy and warmly lit and everything that made Neil on edge. It was their second session, and they were still getting to know each other. Since his move to a part of the country where nobody was trying to kill him, it had been recommended he talk to someone. ( _No shit_ , he wanted to tell them, _you try running from the mob for seven years._ )

But he was here, which was the important part.

Betsy asked, “What’s your opinion on soulmarks, Neil?”

Soulmarks were a sort of safe topic for Neil. (Better than most things.) “I think they’re a dream, I guess? They’re a nice sentiment, but what – your skin is covered in the marks of another person’s life. And when you touch your hypothetical person, suddenly all the tattoos become full of color, and then, what, you’re just supposed to accept that this person is it for you? That there’s no one else? I don’t really get it.”

Here was a truth. People thought Neil was a romantic, because his skin was covered in soulmarks. Knives and skulls, a sun that only occasionally came out from behind clouds. A murder of crows circling his collarbones, and anatomically correct beating hearts. Lines and lines from Hamlet, from Beowulf, from the Iliad, from what Neil had (eventually) identified as Tolkien Elvish. Eyes that blinked on his wrists, eyes that had been crying tears for a decade.

Here was a truth. People thought Neil was a romantic, but they didn’t look too closely at his skin. If they had, they would have read a different story – a deeply unhappy soulmate, and Neil’s countless scars that his soulmarks barely covered. (For that, at least, he could be thankful.)

“I think that soulmate philosophy can be deeply flawed,” Betsy said mildly. Her tattoos were all black and white. “But I think there’s also something to be said for the fact that soulmates do complement each other. At the end of the day, they’re just like anyone else. I’ve met many happy couples who weren’t soulmates, and many who were. Soulmarks are just another part of how the human brain thinks and reacts.”

Here was another truth. Neil’s parents were soulmates. Neil’s mother’s skin had been almost completely blank, and his father’s the opposite. His father had barely tolerated her, and eventually his father had killed her.

So Neil wasn’t a romantic.

“Neil,” Betsy asked gently. “Are you with me?”

“Yeah,” Neil said after a minute. He wasn’t sure if he liked her yet, but this was what he had. He would make do. He no longer had the energy to keep running.

“Would you like to talk about it more?”

“Not today.”

“Alright. If you think so, then I’d say our session for today is just about up. I’ll see you next Monday?”

“Yeah,” Neil said again. “Thank you.”

The area that Neil had finally, finally settled in (after years running, barely wanting to admit to himself how _tired_ he was) was exactly the opposite of every other place Neil had ever been. Palmetto was nestled among rolling hills, surrounded by dirt roads and old oak trees and fields filled with horses. The town itself was small, and quaint, and everybody knew everybody (which scared Neil, barely wanting to admit to himself how much he wanted to be _known_ ). There was one Main Street, and one grocery store, and Betsy Dobson’s office was in the same building as the community library, which was right next door to the fire station.

Neil had what could (more or less) be called an apartment, in what was (more or less) the town’s only apartment building. The building was very old, and not that tall, and the stairs creaked when Neil went up them, but he had hot water and a bed and a room that he called his own. There were really only three residents other than Neil – his downstairs neighbor, Allison, her on-and-off redneck boyfriend, Seth, and Neil’s roommate, Kevin. Kevin was an old friend, a former national athlete turned history teacher, and altogether a very intense person.

So here was the thing. Due to Kevin’s aforementioned intenseness, most people didn’t tend to warm up to him quickly, certainly not enough to appear in his house. Which meant when Neil came back to the apartment after his therapy appointment to find a blond occupying the couch, he was justifiably confused.

“Who the hell are you,” Neil asked, and tried to calm his racing heart.

He had long blond hair like cornsilk pulled back in a messy bun, and a strong body wrapped up in a cozy sweater very at odds with his sharp expression. His skin was almost completely covered, helped by black armbands poking out from under his sleeves, and the little skin Neil could see was blank, save a few Nordic runes on his fingers. He was also small, Neil noticed, shorter than him (and that wasn’t easy).

That, of all things, was what re-centered him. Mobsters didn’t tend to be five foot even.

The blond blinked at him slowly. After a few seconds of silence, he finally said, “I live here.”

Neil tilted his head with what was still fairly justifiable confusion. “Since when?”

The blond raised a slow eyebrow. “Since always. Who are _you_?”

“Uh,” Neil said. “I’m Neil. I’m a friend of Kevin’s.”

“God knows how that happened,” the blond muttered. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Andrew Minyard.”

“What?” Neil asked.

“My name,” the blond iterated. “It’s Andrew. There’s baklava on the counter.”

Neil did not have any idea what baklava was. When he made some noise aloud that seemed to convey this, Andrew made a corresponding noise that communicated a heavy amount of disdain, and turned the TV back on.

The next morning Neil and Kevin went running together, as they tended to do. It satisfied the relentless search for perfection in Kevin (at least, sort of), and it satisfied the constant buzz of anxiety in Neil (at least, for a few hours).

In those mornings, before the sun had fully risen, everything was quiet and still. The mist settled among the hills and the trees, a veil between reality and dream, like Neil could just as easily float out of his body and leave everything behind. The dirt roads they ran on were papered with wet red leaves swirling down from the dwindling canopy above, and the brightness of the autumn colors was a stark contrast to the overcast skies, to the pale fog, to the brown dirt and the black road and the old white houses.

They’d been Kevin’s suggestion, when Neil had first moved in and thought he could take all of his problems out on a treadmill. And Neil hated to admit it, but Kevin was right. The morning runs were soothing, and cathartic, and they provided a way for Neil and Kevin to tentatively reforge their high school friendship.

So Neil asked, a mile and a half in, “Who’s Andrew?”

“Oh, he’s here,” Kevin replied, which Neil really thought should’ve been a no-brainer, but he was relearning this stuff. Kevin was very intelligent, but it was the kind of intelligence that lent itself to three things, and only three things – running, history, and photography, in that order. Most of the rest of the world tended to fly right past him.

“Is he living here permanently?” Neil asked, and tried not to ask, _are you kicking me out_?

Something must have shown in his voice, though, because Kevin glanced over, and almost tripped over a rock. “He does this. He’s writing a book. He’ll probably crash on the couch for a few months. His best friend runs the bakery in town, he’ll help her out some, too.” Kevin leapt over a puddle in a long stride. “I told you, that room is yours.”

Neil relaxed minutely, and tried to tamp down the still-swirling thoughts of whether or not Andrew would replace him. Could replace him. Instead he asked, “How do you know him?”

They crested a hill; both their watches beeped to mark the mile. “We were in group therapy together,” Kevin said. “A few years ago. Somehow we just stuck.”

Neil nodded, and they lapsed back into companionable silence for the next few miles. At the turn-around point, they stopped, and Kevin snapped a few pictures of the way the clouds curled over the mountains like affectionate friends.

Kevin asked, a little awkwardly, “Is that ok?”

Neil blinked. “Andrew?” He paused to think about it. Was it? “Yeah, that’s ok.”

Kevin looked at him. His gaze was steady. Kevin had already faced his demons; now it was Neil’s turn. “Alright,” Kevin finally said. “Our pace was a little slower than usual. Let’s head back.”

Both the stairs and the floor creaked horribly when the pair tried to get back into their apartment, which almost ensured that their newest resident would be awake. And indeed he was, drinking a cup of coffee and glaring at the door like it and them had personally offended him.

“Morning, Andrew,” Kevin said, and disappeared in the direction of the bathroom to shower.

Andrew glared even harder, if that was possible. Neil, who didn’t really want to be left alone but didn’t appear to have a choice, gestured a hesitant wave at Andrew.

“There’s donuts,” Andrew said in return, and jerked his chin towards the table.

There were donuts. Neil’s mind gave him a minute-long over-analysis on whether ignoring the donuts would lead Andrew to hate him and convince Kevin to kick him out, and then forced himself to take one. It was, as expected, too sweet.

“Well don’t hurt yourself,” Andrew said. “If you don’t like it, don’t eat it.”

Neil put down the donut and went to the fridge to look for some fruit.

“You have a lot of issues for one man,” Andrew said.

Neil returned, “And you’re kind of an asshole.”

Andrew gave an unexpected bark of laughter, and then looked surprised at himself for it.

After Neil took his own shower he found Kevin gone to work, and Andrew with the TV back on. Neil stood in the kitchen for a few minutes. There wasn’t anything he needed to do today, which was nice not to worry about, but there also wasn’t anything he needed to do today, and that in and of itself seemed wrong, like his mother should have a list for him, like he ought to be anxious about this too. Sometimes it seemed like everything made him anxious – he kept looking around corners for people who weren’t going to be there, kept expecting to feel the sting of fresh wounds on his skin or the pangs of hunger in his stomach, kept waiting to bite the hand that fed him.

Andrew said, “Sit. You’re going to wear a hole through the floor. And bring me a donut.”

Neil handed Andrew a donut, and Andrew handed Neil a stack of papers.

“What,” Neil asked.

Andrew stuffed the donut in his mouth, and pointed towards the floor, where similar stacks of paper were fanning around him in a half-circle. “They’re chapters. They’re numbered. Lay them out.”

The movie was quiet, and Andrew was quiet, and the rain on the roof created a soothing ambiance. The windows were just a bit fogged up from the faulty heating of the old building, and Andrew had turned off most of the lights, so it was rather dim. Neil, almost accidentally, fell into the rhythm of the careful systematic organization.

At least, he did, until Andrew made a rather distasteful noise and pointed. “Wrong.”

Neil did not jump, although he wanted to. But he swung his head around. “What?”

“That chapter is in the wrong place, so move it.”

Neil spluttered. “It’s in the right place. There’s a number right there!”

“Yes, the number is in the right place, but it’s numbered wrong.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault,” Andrew told him impatiently. “I’m just saying it’s in the wrong place, and I am not going to ask nicely.”

Neil, mollified, moved the chapter to where Andrew gestured. “What is this about?”

Andrew, who was rifling through yet another chapter, paused. “Words.”

Neil blinked. “Words?”

“Yes. In Tolkien.” At Neil’s blank look, Andrew huffed. “Words. A study on Tolkien’s usage of linguistics in developing the world and culture that would eventually lead to a revolutionization of the genre we now know as high fantasy, as well as the real-life language structures that he more or less smashed together in order to make up his languages and according dialects as such.”

Neil knew a lot of things, including where to stab somebody so they would bleed a lot. He did not know anything about Tolkien other than the vague pieces of script that littered his skin. Andrew seemed to understand this, and sighed heavily.

The rest of the week went by equally strangely. Andrew hemmed and hawed (or as much as Andrew seemed to hem or haw) over the order of the chapters, but he also explained the contents of them in bits and pieces to Neil, and began asking his opinion on whether one should be adapted. It was better than what he’d been doing before Andrew showed up, which had been sitting on the couch all day and trying not to go in anxious mental circles. Andrew seemed to understand this more than anybody had so far, which put a nervous flutter in his throat – had Andrew been able to read him that easily?

And yet there was also this opposing, strange warmth in his chest every time Andrew abruptly yanked him out of a spiral by emphasizing some grammatical issue or another, and he wondered if maybe Andrew recognized in him something he too had gone through. It was all frankly rather baffling to Neil, who understood absolutely nothing about linguistics or Andrew.

On Saturday, when Kevin wasn’t working, he and Neil went for a longer run in the morning. It was a clear day, bright and cold, and the mountains looked like they might be on fire, all auburn reds and golden browns. When they got back to the apartment, Andrew (wrapped up in a black sweater and an orange quilt and his ever-present armbands) took one look at their frozen faces and told them they were going to the bakery.

“Would you like a donut, too, Neil?” Renee asked kindly. She’d already served Andrew and Kevin a few Halloween-themed donuts, and Kevin had only whined about his diet a little bit. 

Neil didn’t know how she knew his name. “Um,” he said, but Andrew cut in.

“Cinnamon chocolate chip muffin.”

Renee raised a pale eyebrow at Neil, patient and quiet. A lizard tattoo crawled along her collarbone, and a sunbeam sparkled at Neil.

Neil, who had found in recent years that making decisions on his own was incredibly nerve-wracking, said, “Sure.”

They walked back to the apartment. Andrew and Kevin bickered along some well-worn conversational groove, an argument they’d evidently had before – whether or not Andrew should join them on their morning runs. Back at the house, they ate their pastries and continued to bicker, this time about what show to watch. Neil sat and digested his muffin (it had been ok) and quietly listened. He didn’t have to talk, which was nice (and he tried not to worry too much that maybe they didn’t _want_ him to talk).

“West Wing,” Kevin said, and snapped his fingers.

“You’ve been living together for a month, and you haven’t shown him West Wing?”

“I do have a job, you know. A life, even.”

Andrew made a disgusted noise, and then quickly flipped through Netflix. He pointed an accusatory finger at Neil, who startled. “Pay attention. I’m not stopping to explain anything to you.”

Kevin snorted in disbelief, and was promptly proved right when Andrew paused the show five minutes in to elaborate on how it was written. Except he got twenty seconds through his explanation, and then Kevin started talking over him, and then they were both clambering to prove their point to Neil faster.

On Monday, with some disbelief, Neil told Betsy Dobson that he was fairly certain he’d acquired another friend.

“And what do you think of that?” Betsy asked.

Neil glanced at the floor, where there was a crack in the hardwood. “I guess it’s alright.”

Betsy hummed in supposed agreement. “What would you call that, Neil?”

Neil looked up at her face, but skittered away from her eyes. “What?”

“Progress,” Betsy said, and smiled gently at him.

And, really. What did Neil have to say to that?

* * *

Andrew was blunt, and he was rude. It was, in Neil’s opinion, nice.

Most of the time.

“A man should not have so many problems,” Andrew observed, when the smoke billowing from the oven made Neil flinch. Neil sent him a glare, and took what was supposed to be broccoli out of the oven.

“There are things I am sure you are decent at. Up to and including running, considering it is all Kevin ever talks about,” Andrew said, which was enough of a compliment that Neil turned and squinted at him. But Andrew finished with, “I do not think cooking is one of those skills.”

Neil looked at the broccoli. There wasn’t too much smoke, and in any case Andrew had done something with the kitchen smoke detector a few days ago when Neil’s bagel had burnt to a crisp in the toaster oven. But there was enough to make him think of a burning house, and a burning car, and – “I think you’re probably right.”

“Do you have any idea how to cook?” There wasn’t anything in Andrew’s voice. No judgement. No _what the hell is wrong with your life._

“No,” Neil admitted. When he’d been young, there’d been a cook, and then there’d been middle school, and then – well, then he and his mother had run. Andrew seemed to see something change in Neil’s face, because he rolled his eyes slightly. And that made Neil feel a little bit stupid, and like maybe Andrew didn’t like him, so he shifted and dropped his gaze towards the damn broccoli.

Andrew huffed. “I spent some time in juvie,” he said abruptly.

Neil blinked. “Ok.”

“I learned a few things in juvie,” Andrew told him. “I learned how to fight, I learned how to suck a dick, and I learned how to bake cookies.”

Neil blinked again. “Ok.”

Andrew looked vaguely pleased. “See how this works? You tell me something true, and I will tell you something true.”

Neil thought about that. A life full of lies, and now this blond midget was asking him to just _tell the truth_. Instead of trying to find a way to respond to _that_ , he asked, “What do you do, then? When you’re not freeloading with Kevin, I mean.”

Andrew scoffed at him. “And what do you do? I’m writing a book, and you just sit around all day.”

Neil thought about easy truths. “I have more money than I know what to do with.”

Andrew shifted forward and rested his head on his hand, while Neil endeavored to scrape the broccoli off the pan. A still-black-and-white skeletal cat scampered across Andrew’s exposed collarbone. “I am going to teach,” he said. “Next year. I’m finishing my book first. I only just graduated.”

“Ah,” Neil said. He had not gone to college. He’d been a bit busy doing things like not dying. He tried not to think about those days, or the fact that he had basically nothing to do for the rest of his life, considering he had now accomplished being shot, being kidnapped, and receiving a fake high school diploma.

These thoughts were fairly anxiety-inducing.

Andrew made an aggravated noise, which, Neil was learning, wasn’t that different from his grumpy noise or his disdainful noise. “We’re going to get ingredients for cookies.”

Neil opened his mouth.

Andrew shot him a glare. “ _I_ am going to make the cookies.”

Said cookies came in handy later, when Kevin (surprisingly) forwent his grading and managed to talk Andrew and Neil into driving up the mountain around nine pm to look at the moon. (There was no talking involved. Kevin dangled a few of Renee’s donuts and the tin of cookies and asked nicely, which was a rare enough occurrence that Andrew agreed to take a break from his book. Neil, who’d gotten that warm feeling again when Kevin had proposed the idea in a way that included him too, simply nodded.)

So they were up on the mountain, at an overlook, in the dark. Kevin killed the engine on his well-worn (but not necessarily well-loved; it was a piece of shit) truck, and brought out his camera and tripod (the money that could have been used to buy a car that wasn’t a piece of shit had, instead, been used for this). Andrew got out silently, wearing a blanket around his shoulders like a cape and carrying the various baked goods like crown jewels. He climbed into the back of the pickup, and sat back against the cab, and Neil joined him on the other side of the bed, with a small blanket of his own that Kevin had tossed to him.

Neil hadn’t learned many things about Andrew Minyard (he had, but he refused to admit that to himself, nor to acknowledge the warmth it brought) but he knew the smaller man didn’t like to be touched very much. It was written in the way that Kevin always looked before knocking shoulders, in the tilt of Renee’s head when she took Andrew’s credit card, in the way that Andrew wrapped quilt and sweater and armbands around his skin like a shield.

Neil could relate. So Neil sat on the other side of the bed.

They watched Kevin putter around with his camera for a few minutes. The moon was big tonight, and orange, and a few silver clouds drifted thinly in front of it like cobwebs. The stars were bright, too, a tapestry of fire, and on the ground far below was a quilt of darkness, the lines of wood and field and hill.

“Cookie?” Andrew asked, like he’d just remembered where he left his manners.

Neil shook his head, then realized Andrew couldn’t see him in the dark. “No, thanks.”

“What’s wrong with cookies?”

Neil shifted a glance towards Andrew, who looked relaxed enough to be curious. “Bad memories,” he said. “Makes me think too much.” Yes, the cloying sweetness, of the sugar cookies his mother had always made when he was young, of the frosting he’d snuck a finger of and laughed until he got caught and then got –

He looked down at his hands, and rubbed the scars across his fingers. A word in Elvish, on his wrist, though it had been on the inside of his pinky just yesterday. A flowing script across his knuckles: _there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy._ A shift, and a flurry, and below that: _then I looked, and saw a pale horse. it’s rider’s name was death, and Hades followed close behind._ Beautiful words on horrible hands, beautiful words on horrible scars.

Neil wasn’t a romantic. But perhaps, it was better to have these marks of a life lived, rather than these old ones of terror and pain.

Kevin climbed into the bed of the truck, and settled between the two of them. He fit, though his legs stuck out the end more than theirs did. He accepted a cookie from Andrew and a corner of the blanket from Neil, and Neil’s brain was quiet. Things were, possibly, alright.

Betsy would be proud of him for now, Neil decided.

They watched the moon and the stars, and listened to the crickets and the birds and the sound of Andrew making his way through two donuts and three cookies.

“Beauty is terror,” Kevin said, out loud. “Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Neil, while more or less understanding the sort of dark and academic vibes that both Kevin and Andrew aspired for, had no clue what this meant.

Andrew sighed, and answered in a monotone: “And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being’. To be absolutely free. One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst. To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal. These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

“Donna Tartt,” Kevin replied, and exhaled in a content sort of way. And then he added as an afterthought, “You showoff.”

“Pfft,” Andrew said, in a vaguely smug way.

Neil, whose heart was in his throat at the thought of adding his own voice to this private happiness, said quietly, “I think you’re both showoffs.”

Andrew scoffed, and Kevin laughed, and maybe Neil was safe.

* * *

“You know,” Neil brought up the nerve to say to Kevin, on the third mile of their shorter morning run, “your soulmarks have color in them now. They didn’t when I knew you, did they?”

Kevin waited a quarter of a mile to respond. Neil waited, and half-hoped Kevin wasn’t going to get mad at him for asking, even though Kevin didn’t tend to get mad about these sorts of things (Kevin was infinitely more inclined to get mad about things like a person eating four donuts in a row, which was thankfully not a problem Neil had), and anyway Neil was on an upswing right now, and if Kevin got mad at him he might get mad back.

It was true, though. Kevin’s most obvious soulmarks, a raven on one cheekbone and a stylistic sun on the other, were shot through with gold and red, like watercolor paintings. His arms were like that too – thin black lines and swirls of pastel everywhere. It softened Kevin’s sharp edges, in a way.

“Yeah,” Kevin finally said. Neil really didn’t know if he was supposed to follow this line of questioning, but Kevin continued anyway. “I met them.”

He didn’t specify _he_ , _she_ , or _they_ , Neil noticed. “Ah?” Neil offered.

“It wasn’t the right time,” Kevin said, and picked up his pace a little bit.

“That’s fair,” Neil replied, and unbidden, his thoughts went to his parents.

“It will be someday, though,” Kevin said.

“You think you’ll meet them again?” Neil asked, only a little skeptical.

“Fate is a cruel bitch,” Kevin said, in a roundabout way. “I wasn’t the right person, and it wasn’t the right time.” He took a deep breath in; let it out quick. “But I might be, now, and I’ll find them again.” Determined, and persistent. That had always been Kevin.

“You’re a very different person, from when I knew you,” Neil told Kevin. He didn’t say, _it’s nice to see that you no longer drink away the terror in your voice. It’s nice to see that your voice doesn’t shake when you speak of things like a future._

“So are you,” Kevin said, and really, there was nothing to say to that.

Neil didn’t stop thinking about soulmarks, though. “You know,” Neil said to Andrew later. “I don’t know much about Tolkien’s writing.”

Andrew coughed out something that sounded like, “No shit.”

“But,” Neil continued, “I haven’t seen anything in your book about his writing on soulmarks.”

Andrew shrugged, but it looked more practiced than usual. “They’re not there.”

Neil tilted his head. “That’s odd,” he finally said.

“Is it?” Andrew challenged. “Or maybe it’s how the world should be.”

Neil looked at Andrew, noticing the signs of Andrew gearing up for a rant. “Yes?”

Andrew took a deep breath, which was definitely the indication of an incoming explanation of something or another that he was passionate about, so Neil settled in to listen. He didn’t mind these long and eloquent monologues from Andrew; he didn’t have to respond, but he was still included. Besides, watching these small moments when Andrew did not sit on his hands were lovely; instead, he gestured them around as he talked with what could almost pass for enthusiasm. Andrew was so impassive and silent, most of the time. An Andrew alight with righteous fire was an Andrew that shone unashamedly.

Andrew elaborated, for minutes on end, about the uniqueness of Tolkien’s world and its lack of soulmarks, and of the strange and metaphorical way it compared to the subversion of popular tropes, and the theme of taking charge of your own destiny (or in that case, the tragedy that ensued when one subjected themselves to a predestined course). It was a long and well thought out ramble, like Andrew had given it before.

In fact, there was almost a tinge of desperation in it, and Neil wondered about the soulmarks Andrew fought to cover up completely. Was he scared of them? That didn’t seem quite right, and then Neil realized that the fervor with which he was defending his current point almost pointed towards a belief in the opposite.

Neil, however, was swept away from this train of thought when Andrew stopped in the middle of a sentence. “What?” Neil asked, quickly trying to figure out what he’d missed. Did he do something wrong?

“You weren’t listening anymore,” Andrew said.

“I was listening,” Neil defended. “I like listening.”

Andrew’s expression was inscrutable. “Hm,” was all he said.

Neil realized now that Andrew might be slightly offended. “No, really. I just don’t know how I feel about soulmarks.”

“Do any of us?” Andrew said rhetorically.

Neil, in the same fashion that a smoldering house will suddenly cave in on itself and burst into flames, said, “My parents were one of those couples.”

Andrew stilled, and that was one of those things. Andrew always seemed to recognize when Neil was revealing some terrifyingly vulnerable part of himself. Neil wasn’t sure how it made him feel. (No, it made him feel warm, and known, and it was both terrifying and exhilarating.)

“My mother never really had any soulmarks,” Andrew said.

“My father killed my mother,” Neil told him, letting it whirl out into the air.

Andrew didn’t react. Instead he said, “My mother died in a car crash while I was in the car.”

This odd exchange of truths. “I don’t know if it would be a better world without soulmarks,” Neil said. “It is not a good world anyway. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to have art on your skin.”

Andrew let out a sigh, like Neil had emphasized the very thing he was trying so hard to hide, and said, “Let’s go to the bakery.”

So they went to the bakery.

It was even more like fall, now. Leaves cluttering the sidewalks, a brisk chill in the air, the sun shining in the way that made everything seem both bright and cold. Inside the bakery, there was a line, and Andrew glanced at the menu for a few minutes while Neil glanced at Andrew.

Andrew was odd, Neil had already decided. (When he’d mentioned Andrew to Betsy, she’d gotten an affectionate half-smile on her face, and that too was odd.) But there was something about Andrew that made him comfortable. He didn’t judge, and in most cases, he didn’t care. Yet in his every interaction with Kevin, even the ones where they were sniping at each other like bitter brothers, he was careful and deliberate. That, Neil was beginning to realize, was his way of caring. And, if Neil pushed his worries and spirals to the side for a few minutes, he was pretty sure Andrew was beginning to act that way towards him, too.

“Neil,” Renee said, and handed him a brown bag.

“What did you get me?” Neil asked Andrew as they left the bakery.

“Blackberry turnover,” Andrew said. “More pastry, less sweet. Berries, too. Health freak.”

“Huh,” Neil said. “Thanks.”

* * *

The next month did not go by slowly. Kevin got a week off (more or less) for fall break, during which the three of them baked cookies (nothing got set on fire), hiked nine miles (Kevin got dropped in a stream), and marathoned all three _Lord of the Rings_ movies in one go (by the end of the third one, Kevin was fast asleep between them, and in the dim lateness, Andrew looked so soft and sleepy and almost happy that there was that _damn_ warmth in Neil’s chest again).

Then came Halloween, and a quiet evening invitation to spend time with Renee and Allison and a few of their friends, and oddly enough Betsy was there, and Kevin drank but not in that desperate way he used to, and Andrew didn’t drink but sat on the side of the party and watched, and when Neil came and sat down next to him Andrew offered a barely-lit cigarette and an ember of a conversation about a book called _Dune_.

It seemed, for a while, like everything was going alright, for possibly the first time in Neil’s adult life.

But in the grand scheme of things, of course it was on a cold November evening that Neil came home and everything went wrong.

The door to their apartment was cracked open. From inside, Neil could hear raised voices. That in and of itself was not unfamiliar; Kevin and Andrew bickered like they breathed. But it was when he heard his name that he froze.

“You finally figured it out,” Kevin was saying.

Neil hung back.

“Of course I figured it out,” Andrew said sharply. “I’m not obtuse, Kevin.”

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

“Am I – did you tell me to come back on _purpose_?”

Kevin scoffed. “I didn’t _know_ , Andrew, I can’t guess these kinds of things.”

“You knew. You guessed. Why did you think I should be here, Kevin? You know how I feel about this. You couldn’t come to terms with your life, so what, you just have to meddle with mine? What a _great_ friend.”

Did Andrew sound…scared?

“Andrew,” Kevin started.

“Damn it, Kevin, you know I can’t do this.”

Neil backed away from the door as his throat closed up. Of course. He didn’t know why he’d thought that Andrew would want him here. He tried to swallow, and he stepped backwards and onto the creaky stair, and the voices that had been growing louder in the apartment (he didn’t want to listen anymore) suddenly stopped.

Neil needed to run, Neil needed to get away – Neil wasn’t breathing. There was a fight-or-flight reaction going on, and a lot of adrenaline.

He thought these sorts of feelings had been over.

“Neil – ”

It was Andrew.

Neil turned away from him, not wanting him to see his face. Of course Andrew didn’t want him here. Why had he thought Andrew had?

“Neil,” Andrew said sharply, in a voice that brooked no disagreement.

Neil snapped his head towards Andrew. That tone had not meant good things, with his father. Andrew’s blank, impassive stare went slightly less blank when he saw Neil’s face.

“What did you hear?” Andrew asked.

“It’s fine,” Neil said, and skittered away from Andrew’s eyes. Brown like bitter coffee, brown like the leaves off the trees, how come all the things Neil loved always died or left or –

Neil froze to a stop, which gave Andrew just enough time to half-block the stairway, imposing and solid like a brick wall. He didn’t touch Neil, though, didn’t grab him, didn’t raise a hand towards him. But that was a leftover from a different person. Andrew wasn’t his father, Neil told himself. Andrew would never hurt him, Neil _knew_.

Except – _you know I can’t do this._

That hurt, a little.

“Look,” Andrew started, and muttered something that sounded like, “Goddamn pipe dream.” Then he spoke up. “Look, Neil, it’s just that,” a pause, and then through gritted teeth, “I’m…sorry. I…said that because I was,” he breathed out, “scared.”

Neil flinched a little at that.

Andrew clenched his fists, and his face grew even tighter. “No. Damn it. Neil. You…make me feel things. That I’m not used to.”

Neil shook his head. Andrew didn’t lie. Was it really that?

“I…” Andrew started, then forged forward, with a muttered curse towards Kevin. “Kevin doesn’t want you to leave. And…I don’t. Either.” Another breath out. “Stay.”

Neil felt some of the tension bleed out of his body.

“Neil,” Andrew said quietly, and stepped forward with something a little like fear and desperate need. “Your hands. Yes or no?”

“What?” Neil glanced at his hands, and inside of his wrist was Elvish, just as normal. Andrew was still waiting for a response. “Ok, yes.”

And Andrew – Andrew, so gently, took his hands and flipped them over, and tapped the line that graced the fine bones of Neil’s fingers today. _let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. then spit us out reborn._

Neil’s focus narrowed down to Andrew’s hands and forearms in his, sans armbands for the first time Neil had ever known. They were paler than Neil’s, with those same runes, and of all things, flowers, asphodel and wolfsbane and crocuses dripping between his elbows and wrists. Flowers that Neil knew, flowers that his mother had loved, flowers that were –

Flowers that were full of color. Neil’s gaze yanked towards the little sun in the crook of his elbow, that so rarely came out from behind the clouds.

It was glowing, gently. Neil looked up at Andrew.

Andrew, with that fear in his gaze, that need in his eyes, nonetheless met his eyes standing straight. Not running away. “Neil,” Andrew said.

“Andrew,” Neil replied, and he tried to hate how hopeful it sounded, but he couldn’t.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil breathed out.

And when Andrew met his lips so unflinchingly, and when Andrew hesitantly deepened the kiss, and when Kevin swore and dropped something loudly from within the apartment, and when Kevin yelled “Took you long enough!”, and when Andrew almost smiled against Neil’s lips, and when their hands twined together were this beautiful work of art – 

Neil was home.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed it!! <3
> 
> also - lil moodboard for it on my [tumblr](https://stormwarnings.tumblr.com/post/629154680302452736/rating-teen-no-archive-warnings-apply-fandom)


End file.
